Authors

James Byrne

Biography

James Byrne is a British poet and Editor of The Wolf magazine. He was born in Buckinghamshire in 1977 and his first book of poems Passages of Time was published in 2002 and included some of his earliest poems. A second collection, Blood/Sugar, was published by Arc Publications in November 2009. He now lives in England again after two years in New York City, where he received a Stein scholarship and an MFA from New York University. He is the Poet in Residence at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge.

In 2008, James won the Treci Trg poetry festival prize in Serbia. In 2009 his New and Selected Poems: The Vanishing House was published by Treci Trg (in a bilingual edition) in Belgrade. He is the editor of The Wolf: A Decade (Poems 2002-2012) and is the co-editor of Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century, an anthology of British poets under 35, published by Bloodaxe in 2009.

Since becoming sole editor of The Wolf in April 2006, James has broadened the international reach of the magazine. In June 2012, Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets was co-edited and co-translated by James Byrne and ko ko thett and is widely recognised as the first anthology of contemporary Burmese poetry available.

James's own poems have been translated into several languages, including Arabic, Serbian and French. In 2009 he was invited by the British Council in Damascus to participate in the Al-Sendian arts festival in Syria, where he read to over 1,000 people and in 2012 he read his work at the inaugural Tripoli Poetry Festival in Libya. James is also a notable promoter of poetry, for many years co-hosting New Blood, an event for young poets and organising events for The Wolf, including national and international tours. In 2004 he worked for the 'World Poets' Tour' for the Poetry Translation Centre. Since 2002 James has interviewed many poets for The Wolf including Charles Simic, Penelope Shuttle and Alfred Corn. He is also a notable reviewer, publishing critical prose recently in Poetry Review and World Literature Today.